Review and Analysis of the Benefits, Purposes, and Motivations Associated with Community Gardening in the United States by Carrie Draper and Darcy Freedman
“Carrie Draper is a research associate in the Department of Health Promotion, Education, and Behavior at the University of South Carolina‚ Arnold School of Public Health. In that role, she leads multiple evaluation studies on public nutrition assistance programs and community-based food systems strategies. Previously, she served for 5 years as the Director of Policy and Partnership Development for the Arnold School’s Nutrition Center. She is the co-chair of the state’s Food Policy Council, a steering committee member of the state’s Food Access Task Force, and an appointed member and vice-chair of the City of Columbia’s Food Policy Committee. Her educational background and professional identities are rooted in social work and social justice.”
Darcy Freedman has a Ph.D. and Master’s in Public health. She is an applied population health scientist and community psychologist. Her research interests lie in food access interventions (e.g., farmers’ markets, community gardens, food policy), community-engagement and civic participation, public health literacy, primary prevention of chronic disease (e.g., Obesity, diabetes, cancer), and nutrition and food security.
Since the late 19th century, community gardens have been a part of mainstream American culture. In response to changing socio-economic conditions, engagement in community gardening has ebbed and flowed, and so the ongoing economic crisis has strengthened the public interest. Rigorous quantitative empirical studies on the impact of community gardens were found to be scarce in a study of academic literature from 1999 to 2010. A greater body of data is available, however. Eleven themes are established related to the aims, advantages, and motives of engaging in community gardens. Community gardens can serve as an important tool for community-based practitioners to perform their roles in organizing, creating, and shifting arenas.
Community gardens have been on the rise of popularity. This article provides us with insight on the importance of community gardens. It breaks down it’s background, history, purpose and methods. Community agriculture is a tradition in the United States that is more than a century old and is still as important today as it was during the formative years of the 1890s. Community gardens have the ability to simultaneously alleviate numerous social ills with high unemployment rates, growing food poverty, and the ever increasing number of obese Americans, while showcasing the properties of cities at the same time.
Draper, Carrie, and Darcy Freedman. “Review and Analysis of the Benefits, Purposes, and Motivations Associated with Community Gardening in the United States.” Journal of Community Practice, vol. 18, no. 4, 2010, pp. 458–492., doi:10.1080/10705422.2010.519682.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10705422.2010.519682
